The present invention is directed to a computerized method for matching paint on vehicles and a networked computer system for implementing the method.
Matching the original paint color on vehicles being repaired is an inexact process in which a person attempting to match the paint often must rely on trial and error processes by which the paint is matched. In spite of the availability of computerized color matching aids, the painter at a body shop often must ultimately resort to “eyeballing” the paint in order to achieve an acceptable match. This results in an inefficient process that can significantly affect labor cost in a typical body shop.
A number of methods have been devised to automate the process of paint matching. A typical automated method uses a device (e.g., a spectrophotometer) that measures certain qualities of the painted surface, such as reflectance at one or more wavelengths and at different angles, and automatically matches the measurements to those archived in a computer database in connection with paint formulas. In this method, the computer database is located at the repair facility. The paint formulas are then used to prepare a paint and the paint is compared to the original paint on the vehicle. If the paint matches, the area is painted. If not, the paint formula is adjusted manually by trial and error until a match is made. These processes are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,668,633 and 5,841,421. The difficulty in these processes is that there is no assurance that the new formulation is entered into the local body shop's database, and no assurance that each computer database at each body shop will be updated. It is common in the automotive body repair industry to find most computer paint databases are not kept up-to-date. They are updated sporadically, and with limited feedback from the body shop to the manufacturer of the paint matching system.
Automobile paint color variability within the same nominal color is typically due to slight variations in color in the paint formulations used by the original equipment manufacturers (OEM). These variations may occur from one manufacturing location to another manufacturing location, or from one production run to another of a given color on the same vehicle model, or even during the course of a particular production run. Although these differences may be unnoticeable on separate vehicles, when they are present on adjacent body panels of the same vehicle, the differences can be visibly perceptible. These color variations make it difficult to attain excellent color matching in repair shops.